My Great Grandmother's bedroom suit

Lanora Ann MacDonald Holt.I loved my great grandmother. She was so fun. This is a picture from my Sophomore year in college with her. (Yes I still had big glasses) We lived across town from her when I was in middle school and highschool. So we helped take care of her and ran errands with her. She was born in 1897 so she had seen a LOT of things change in the world as she grew older. By the way it was fun to get her opinions about those things. When we would take her places or clean up her house she had one small "demand". There was to be no sound while she watched her soap opera, As the World Turns. She grew up with this program. She started listening to it on the radio when she was a young woman and stayed with it as long as she was alive. She was also an excellent seamstress. She never used a pattern that anyone knew of except to look at the picture of what is was supposed to look like when she was finished sewing it. She truly was an artist and bestowed her talents upon many ladies all over the sandhills of NC.

One honor that was bestowed upon me by my Aunt Louise before she died was to insist that I have Great Grandmama's bedroom suit. She knew I loved Great Grandmama and was really sentinmental about her so she thought I was the best one to keep the bedroom suit and make sure it was taken care of. Well as you can imagine it needed some fixing up. It was originally purchased in the 30's as best as our family can estimate. It had the original orange stain with lots of water and heat damage. So my dad came to the rescue. He likes to refinish old furniture so when he and my mom came he started tackling this project.

Here is a pic of the vanity after he removed the stain. It is beautiful wood. We think its soft maple. But it really has many woods that were used in it. It was manufactured in Winston Salem NC. Dad worked today to put the stain on it. Tomorrow we work on getting it sealed and then wax it down.

Well I will post the after pictures once they everything is done. Thus go the adventures of refinishing furniture.